In the future, North and South America will collide with Asia, forming a new supercontinent.
Over the past few million years, the earth as we know it has drastically changed. In fact, our planet’s geology has been changing ever since our planet formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Today, there are seven acknowledged continents, with one sort of already accepted. We have Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia (Oceania). But there is another additional content called Zealandia, which was only recently discovered. If you look at the world map, you will notice that some continents seem to match up quite nicely with other continents, almost as if we were looking at a gigantic puzzle, almost as if the continents were once one. For example, South America and Africa look like two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together. This is something that was noticed for the first time by Alfred Wegener in the 1910s. Wegener noticed that India and Madagascar line up with Africa as well.
A geological puzzle
Among other strange findings that hint at the fact that our continents were once connected is the discovery of the same animal fossils on two different continents. There are also traces of the same mountains in the United States, but also in Scandinavia. Wegner took all of this into consideration, and in 1912, he presented his discovery to the world. His idea was that continents were like massive icebergs. Constantly in movement. Constantly converging and diverging. The continents move on the Earth’s mantle by several centimeters each year. Then, every few million years, they crash into each other. When this happens, a supercontinent is created. Supercontinents are, therefore, huge landmasses that consist of several small continents. It is likely that, throughout the planet’s long history, many supercontinents have existed. But we can’t really say how many. Nonetheless, we know of one such supercontinent, and it is called Pangaea, a word from the Greek language which translates into “Entire Earth.” This supercontinent is believed to have existed for 160 million years.
Amasia
This is what scientists predict will be Earth’s next supercontinent. The birth of the supercontinent was predicted by experts from the University of New Curtin in Australia. The birth of the supercontinent was predicted thanks to complex calculations and the help of a supercomputer. By uploading the continental movements over the past 3000 million years, scientists were able to “foresee” what the future planet Earth will look like. According to the predictions, in the future., North and south America will collide with Asia. Find out more about the future supercontinent in the video below.
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